Here's a look at the past. Items have been culled from The Chronicle's archives of 25, 50, 75 and 100 years ago.

1988

April 2: The two minority firefighters who found a swastika in their office have filed claims against the city for more than $1 million each, charging that they suffered emotional distress and humiliation as a result of the incident. Fire inspectors Walter Batiste and David Sun have been on disability or sick leave since early January when they found an 18-inch wooden plaque emblazoned with a swastika near their desks at Station 13 in the Financial District. In their claims the firefighters charge that the swastika was meant to intimidate and demean them. If the claims are denied by the city, the firefighters can file suit. "The supervisors at Station 13 knew of the Swastika's existence and had repeatedly acquiesced in its display," contends the suit. In his claim, Sun is joined by his daughter, his mother and another unidentified relative, each of whom is also seeking $1 million for emotional damage. Batiste's wife also is seeking $1 million.

1963

April 1: Barbra Streisand is unquestionably one of the most successful performers ever to appear at the hungry i. A tawny, feline, longhaired girl with a mouth like a character from Oz, she is the late night ballad singer personified. Miss Streisand is one of those rare performers who can take the elements of an Ethel Merman, a Kaye Ballard and a Judy Garland and melt them into a personality that is her own. Miss Streisand is a practiced performer despite her youth. She is not only practiced, she is expert and effective. She has the inspiration to attack various songs as though they were being sung for the very first time. This venturesomeness is the mark of a front rank performer, and indeed Miss Streisand, though only 21, is already that.

1938

April 6: Nude sculpture at the International Exposition must not prove too stimulating to "joyful sailors in port after months on the bounding ocean" or Chief Director Harris Connick will not like it. The art must be appropriate for mothers, fathers, and boys and girls too, Connick said yesterday at a "no women allowed" meeting of a prominent civic club. The chief and his audience let down their hair in the masculine privacy of a Plaza Hotel meeting and discussed nude art - discussed it artistically and anatomically.

"If mothers are not willing to put the statues on their mantelpieces and raise their children around them, some people say they are not fit for the exposition," Connick said. Then he produced photographs of the disputed art and asked prominent businessmen:

"Would you like this on your mantelpiece?" He had no takers. Encouraged, the chief director confided "I'm no art critic but personally I think it smells."

Then while his audience of men sat examining the nude figures of "Fertility" and "Abundance," Connick announced that the two pieces cost an even $2,000. Several of the men whistled gently to themselves. The chief director prophesied "hell would be a-popping" if such figures ever graced the walls of the Treasure Island building. A prominent civic leader asked Connick if all the pieces were "insane submissions." The chief assured him that was not the case and that some work would draw favorable attention.

1913

April 2: In the glare of the lights fronting a restaurant on Kearny Street at Commercial Street and in full view of a uniformed sergeant of police, Lee Quon Sing, an aged Chinese rag picker, was shot and killed early yesterday by two Chinese who, the police say, are highbinders and members of the Bing Kong tong, a society that is now at war with the Suey Sing tong. Immediately after the killing of Lee, his two assailants were pursued by police officers, and after a running gun fight through the streets of Chinatown, Yee Lick was captured and charged at the City Prison with murder. The other Chinese eluded his pursuers and escaped into one of the dark, narrow alleys of Chinatown. During the fusillade of shots fired by the police, Frank Giatto of 3140 Kearny Street was shot in the hip and is now at Harbor Emergency Hospital. Lee Quon Sing was the eighth victim in the Chinese tong war that began three weeks ago as the issue of a quarrel over a slave girl. Never before in the history of tong wars in San Francisco have the highbinders been bold enough to carry their warfare outside the purlieus of the Oriental quarter and into the open thoroughfares of American trade. At the sound of the first pistol shot, Sergeant Herlihy, who was in the restaurant, rushed to the street. Herlihy had to leap over the dead body in taking up pursuit. Policeman Emmett Moore joined him, and both officers discharged their pistols at the fleeing Chinese. A number of wild bullets crashed through the show windows of a department store at Kearny and Commercial Streets and a pawnshop at Kearny and Sacramento. {sbox}